The row over Prince Charles in Canada reminded me of the role of the Royal Family in personifying those timeless traditions which comprise the spine of British culture. One of these great Royal traditions, which has continued right down to the present generations, is buggering the valet.

31 May should be a national holiday in celebration of this great tradition. We should call it Bugger the Valet day. On 31 May 1810 Ernest Duke of Cumberland, fifth son of George III, was buggering his valet Neale. While Cumberland was fully engaged, another servant named Sellis impertinently entered the room. Naturally the Duke, having ordered Sellis to wait and be spoken to, took out his sword and ran Sellis through seven times. Sellis remained impertinent, and even after being stabbed the first time, had the temerity to grab a candlestick and hit the Duke hard on the face, inflicting a disfiguring wound. This of course is described in official histories (and I see on Wikipedia) as having been received in the Napoleonic Wars.

Over the years, seven journalists were imprisoned for publishing an account of Sellis’ death. The Duke failed to pay Neale the money he had promised him to lie that Sellis had attacked the Duke, and subsequently Neale talked rather a lot. The first journalist imprisoned, Henry White, died of disease contracted in prison. Henry White deserves to be remembered.

Cumberland was to marry a woman very widely believed across the German speaking world to be herself a murderess, Princess Frederica of Mecklenburg Strelitz, whose two earlier husbands had died, the second particularly unexpectedly and conveniently.

During the reign of King William IV, Cumberland was second in line to the throne after Victoria. Victoria’s widowed mother, the Duchess of Kent, was shagging her Private Secretary, Sir John Conroy. Actually every summer in Victoria’s teens they did their shagging in Townley House, which I can see now from my study window.

Ten months of the year they lived in Kensington Palace, and Conroy put Victoria into seclusion. Conroy was hated – he was far too middle class to be shagging a Duchess. There was a successful film by that awful far right “Lord” Julian Fellowes a few years ago called The Young Victoria. Conroy was portrayed as a caricature villain, and conventional historians have accepted the monarchist line that his seclusion of Victoria was to maximize his own influence of control.

What Conroy himself said, and is almost never published, was that he was keeping Victoria under very close guard because he was terrified she would be poisoned or otherwise murdered by the heir to the throne, her uncle Cumberland, and his wife. Where this is ever mentioned by historians, it is to ridicule it as a crazy pretext.

In fact Cumberland was a murderer, and Frederica very probably was too. Conroy was absolutely right to protect Victoria from Cumberland. What the establishment would not admit then or now was that there was a very real reason for Conroy to apprehend this danger. Ernest Duke of Cumberland had killed Sellis. His wife Frederica was reputed throughout Europe to have poisoned her second husband in order to marry Ernest and gain the possibility of becoming Queen of England. Only Victoria stood between them and the throne, in an age of high mortality.

When William IV died, Victoria became Queen but as a female could not inherit the other Kingdom of Hanover. Cumberland therefore became King Ernest of Hanover. He abolished parliament and persecuted those regarded as liberal, including the Brothers Grimm who he dismissed from their University posts.

204 thoughts on “Buggering the Valet”

““The cost of setting up all the bodies needed in an independent Scotland could be £1.5bn, the UK Treasury has claimed.”

“It based the figure on research into the costs of setting up an independent state in Quebec, which have been estimated at 1% of GDP.”

Why, I wonder, have they based their figures on a hypothetical analysis of a Canadian province?”
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The “analysis” to which you refer is the “research into the costs of setting up
an independent state in Québec”, which exists – so there’s nothing hypothetical about it, Doug, and you were once again misleading when you referred to a “hypothetical analysis”.

Why can’t HRH Duke of Cambridge (or whatever his title is) get a proper job and be done with it. Stop stealing jobs from the plebiscite who actually need the salary.

Monday, May 26, 2014
EDP

Prince William is contemplating joining the East Anglian Air Ambulance (EAAA) as a pilot, it has been reported.

Last night, a palace spokeswoman said he was considering a “number of options for public service” a year after stepping down from his role as an RAF search and rescue pilot. She said no decision had been made yet. There is speculation that he could join the EAAA because of its close proximity to his country home near Sandringham.

A spokeswoman for the EAAA said she was not aware of the Duke of Cambridge’s interest in joining the organisation. But she added that if he did become part of the service, it would be “amazing for us and the people of East Anglia”.

“So unless you manage to articulate some distinction here, your argument is little more than the usual waffle you trot out in defence of whatever dozy establisment geek is currently in the firing line.”

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And your “reply” is absolutely nothing more than the usual guff you throw out when you’re feeling quarrelsome but not very well instructed.

That guff includes

1/. implying I’ve said something which I haven’t (“The two classes are not mutually exclusive.”)

2/. making unsubstantiated claims (“Political literature”, as you’ve used it,..” – how have I used it, Herbie? Do tell me).

3/ howlers in logic (“Political literature”, as you’ve used it, could be applied to almost any work in the English canon, or any other canon.But nobody calls those works, “political literature” – exactly! because nobody scatters around the term as you seem to do!)

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I don’t think you’re very comfortable discussing matters in this field, are you. Why not leave it to Mr Scorgie?

You’ve claimed that To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men and The Crucible are what you call, “political literature”.

What makes these works “political literature”, any more than many many other works of literature?

It’d be reasonable to describe obviously political works as political literature.

But that’s not what you did.

You’ve invented your own class of literature, in which you’ve dumped these three works. So what is so specifically political about them that doesn’t apply to much of literature, in which case of course that adjective is totally unnecessary.

The answer of course is your own very naive ideology, which I suspect is what the Gove twit is doing too.

You must let let affection for that old bigger Doug cloud whatever judgement you might possess.

When I read the expression “a hypothetical analysis”, I note that “hypothetical” is being used as an adjective to qualify the noun “analysis”. But since the analysis actually exists (it has been carried out), it cannot be hypothetical.

So stop being so daft. Mr Scorgie is again guilty, at best, of loose drafting and no amount of wittering from you is going to convince anyone otherwise 🙂

Palestinian Christians Need a Political Pope Too
The Pope in the Holy Land
by JONATHAN COOK
Nazareth.

When Pope Benedict XVI visited the Holy Land five years ago, Israel heightened its security, gladly emphasising the potential threat he supposedly faced in Israel from Muslim extremists.

As his successor, Pope Francis, arrived in Israel late on Sunday, security was no less strict. Some 9,000 police had been drafted in to protect him, Christian institutions were under round-the-clock protection, and the intelligence services were working overtime. According to a Vatican official, Israel’s preparations had turned “the holy sites into a military base”.

On this occasion Israel was less keen to publicise the source of its fears, because the most tangible threat came not from Islamists but Jewish fanatics linked to Israel’s settler movement

“The “hypothetical analysis” very obviously refers to taking what happened in Quebec and then applying it to Scotland.

The hypothesis lies in the comparison. The “hypothetical analysis” is in fact the very act of comparing.”
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So you are in fact saying that Mr Scorgie should have used the word “comparison” rather than “analysis”.

But even if that is so, why should he have used the word ” hypothetical” to describe a comparison? Either you compare something or you don’t, surely? And apparently the Treasury did, which makes the comparison non-hypothetical.

“amazing for us and the people of East Anglia” said the lady from the EAAA – her vocabulary is full of the jargon ‘going forward’, ‘absolutely’, ‘amazing’. We know her type. Is she by any chance related to Nicholas Witchell?

She should know that many of the NHS paramedics are on zero hours contracts. The voluntary hospital car service has been wrecked by being paid one way only and the mileage allowance dropped. Yes. Take P William’s £millions from him. Give him one of the zero hours contracts and let him try to find a mortgage on it.

This commenter under the piece has ‘got’ it.

‘But of the other RAF airsea rescue crews that got dumped when it was sold off to an American company? I wonder if any of them got offered the job…’

John Goss – surprised to learn you are a fan of ‘V for Vendetta’ as you have described yourself as a Christian.

Mary – if William didn’t work you’d call him a useless layabout and if he does work you accuse him of taking jobs. Let’s just say he will be doing something of considerable more value to society than posting inane copy and paste on a comments thread all day long.

“I’m interested in the ideology that directs you to term these particular works of literature, “political”.”
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I’m flattered by your interest, Herbie, but perhaps you should ask Mary Mischief the question; after all, it was she who wrote “The thought police at the DfE are active. Minds are being moulded.”, thereby implying that the removal of those works was political (because the books themselves are, we must assume).

By the way, still no answer from you to the following : however you light wish to describe them – or not – do you believe that the three works in question are part of the English-language canon?

I’m just talking about Literature more generally, and since you’ve failed to answer my question I’ll just assume your understanding of literary works is purely ideological and deeply rooted in the Edwardian period.

You may of course just be a complete ignoramus, and that doesn’t say much for your approval of Mr Gove’s stupidities.